


Another story, or, how James Vega came to terms with his mediocrity

by vojir



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, Internal Monologue, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 11:46:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1106433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vojir/pseuds/vojir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vega knows he isn't the best, but he thinks that maybe after six months of being by Shepard's side and learning about her own humanity, they might have a chance. To make out sometime. Or something. Then the realities of war set in, and maybe he's more practical than he thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another story, or, how James Vega came to terms with his mediocrity

He’d tried not to think about it. For a long, long time. (As long as he’d known her, which actually wasn’t that long. Six months, give or take a few weeks.) He pointedly didn’t think about it when he saw her at the firing range (with a Widow that he’d only ever seen aliens use because the force of it firing could and had shattered a regular human’s arm). It was nowhere near his mind when they fought in the cargo hold and she told him they needed him alive, with a look on her face he hadn’t seen since Anderson had called Kaidan “Major”. And of course he didn’t think about it — not at all — when she showed up in Purgatory, looking tired and sad (which was all she seemed to be able to express lately).

But he had never really been anything but straightforward. So when he got the message (dated the day the Reapers hit Earth) about being promoted to N7, his first thought was now I’ll be at the same level as Shepard. She isn’t out of my league anymore. Which was a dumb thing to think because all of the not-thinking flooded in and he remembered her face when Anderson said he was staying and he’d overheard that asari making notes into her VI about how stressed Shepard seemed (something about a bad dream). He sent her a message, but it didn’t say what he wanted it to. And when she called him up to her captain’s quarters (filled with VI-fed fish and meticulous spacecraft models) he only told her half of what he wanted to.

Because when she looked at him with the look she gave Kaidan (surprised, proud, a little hurt) he understood. He understood why the marines at the bar were terrified, why Udina talked the council into making her a Spectre (even though Udina hated her guts and she hated his). It all came together in a dizzying sense of well-earned pride and an almost childish happiness. Shepard was different. He’d told her she was human, but the truth was, he still saw her as something more. Something intangible and strong and he thought Chakwas said it best, when she was checking up on him and he couldn’t not-say-not-think about it any longer.

"Shepard," she’d said, sighing and smiling slightly. "Our immovable center."

He’d nodded and frowned and when Shepard called him up to her cabin later on that day it had never seemed more true. Because she was supportive but honest and courageous without being condescending and she cared which was really all that he could’ve ever asked for.

He’d sat in an Alliance bar on some colony near the Terminus systems the day she’d been made Spectre. The ceremony was brief, but there had been a light in Shepard’s eyes that he’d seen the day he’d met her in the firing range on Earth. And though he’d been impressed, sure, and he drank in her honor, he had wondered. Why it’d been her. If it was just government bureaucratic bullshit, like more and more of the Alliance (and the galaxy) seemed to be these days. But when she looked at him, all serious, and asked him if he really wanted to be N7? He knew why. She understood the responsibility and the pain and the fear and the frustration. She still accepted it, and bore it with a grim and terrifying determination.

In that moment he knew. He knew he could never make a move, because she was elevated beyond something he could reach. His first instinct had been that if they were the same military rank, it would be okay. And hadn’t Kaidan been a lieutenant when she and him had had a fling? That’s what Garrus said, in any case. The problem was that circumstances were different now, and so many things were on the line that she needed someone better. Someone like herself. Not James Vega, angry, hardhearted, and something of an exhibitionist. So as much as he tried not to think about it, when he did it wasn’t at all like he thought it would be.

Funny how that works. And how good Peruvian whiskey is for making a guy feel better.

**Author's Note:**

> I READ A BUNCH OF SHEGA and i definitely still hella ship them but i ... this is about the gist of how i personally see my shep and vega interacting. like he has a crazy big crush on her and she kinda... knows it.... but there's not a whole bunch to do about it what with the reapers and shit. i'm hoping to do a closer examination on the six months of her house arrest and stuffff fff ff yeah
> 
> ps i know they didn't MEET in a firing range i didn't... i wasn't fully informed when i wrote this. apologies!


End file.
